Name: Class:

All Summer in a Day

By Ray Bradbury
1954

Ray Bradbury is an American author best known for science fiction, specifically his classic novel Fahrenheit 451
and short stories which inspired multiple generations of writers and scientists. Bradbury also wrote memoirs,
realistic fiction, plays, and screenplays. In this story, Bradbury explores the possible effects of living on another
planet. Purpose for Reading: To understand how character interactions develop a theme and to build our
understanding about how being part of a crowd affects our behavior.

[1] “Ready?”

“Now?”

“Soon.”

“Do the scientists really know? Will it happen today,

will it?”

[5] “Look, look; see for yourself!” "Rain" by Inge Maria is licensed under CC0.

The children pressed to each other like so many roses, so many weeds, intermixed, peering out for a look at the
hidden sun.

It rained.

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It had been raining for seven years; thousands upon thousands of days compounded and filled from one end
to the other with rain, with the drum and gush of water, with the sweet crystal fall of showers and the
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concussion of storms so heavy they were tidal waves come over the islands. A thousand forests had been
crushed under the rain and grown up a thousand times to be crushed again. And this was the way life was
forever on the planet Venus, and this was the schoolroom of the children of the rocket men and women who
had come to a raining world to set up civilization and live out their lives.

“It’s stopping, it’s stopping!”

[10] “Yes, yes!”

Margot stood apart from them, from these children who could never remember a time when there wasn’t rain

1. Compound (verb) to combine or add together

2. Concussion (noun) a violent shock as from a heavy blow

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 and rain and rain. They were all nine years old, and if there had been a day, seven years ago, when the sun
came out for an hour and showed its face to the stunned world, they could not recall. Sometimes, at night, she
heard them stir, in remembrance, and she knew they were dreaming and remembering gold or a yellow crayon
or a coin large enough to buy the world with. She knew they thought they remembered a warmness, like a
blushing in the face, in the body, in the arms and legs and trembling hands. But then they always awoke to the
tatting drum, the endless shaking down of clear bead necklaces upon the roof, the walk, the gardens, the
forests, and their dreams were gone.

All day yesterday they had read in class about the sun. About how like a lemon it was, and how hot. And they
had written small stories or essays or poems about it.

I think the sun is a flower

That blooms for just one hour.

That was Margot’s poem, read in a quiet voice in the still classroom while the rain was falling outside.

[15] “Aw, you didn’t write that!” protested one of the boys.

“I did,” said Margot, “I did.”

“William!” said the teacher.

But that was yesterday. Now the rain was slackening, and the children were crushed in the great thick windows.

“Where’s teacher?”

[20] “She’ll be back.”

“She’d better hurry; we’ll miss it!”

They turned on themselves, like a feverish wheel, all tumbling spokes.

Margot stood alone. She was a very frail girl who looked as if she had been lost in the rain for years and the rain
had washed out the blue from her eyes and the red from her mouth and the yellow from her hair. She was an
old photograph dusted from an album, whitened away, and if she spoke at all her voice would be a ghost. Now
she stood, separate, staring at the rain and the loud wet world beyond the huge glass.

“What’re you looking at?” said William.

[25] Margot said nothing.

“Speak when you’re spoken to.” He gave her a shove. But she did not move; rather she let herself be moved
only by him and nothing else. They edged away from her, they would not look at her. She felt them go away.
And this was because she would play no games with them in the echoing tunnels of the underground city. If
they tagged her and ran, she stood blinking after them and did not follow. When the class sang songs about
happiness and life and games her lips barely moved. Only when they sang about the sun and the summer did
her lips move as she watched the drenched windows.

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 And then, of course, the biggest crime of all was that she had come here only five years ago from Earth, and she
remembered the sun and the way the sun was and the sky was when she was four in Ohio. And they, they had
been on Venus all their lives, and they had been only two years old when last the sun came out and had long
since forgotten the color and heat of it and the way it really was. But Margot remembered.

“It’s like a penny,” she said once, eyes closed.

“No it’s not!” the children cried.

[30] “It’s like a fire,” she said, “in the stove.”

“You’re lying, you don’t remember!” cried the children.

But she remembered and stood quietly apart from all of them and watched the patterning windows. And once,
a month ago, she had refused to shower in the school shower rooms, had clutched her hands to her ears and
over her head, screaming the water mustn’t touch her head. So after that, dimly, dimly, she sensed it, she was
different, and they knew her difference and kept away.

There was talk that her father and mother were taking her back to Earth next year; it seemed vital to her that
they do so, though it would mean the loss of thousands of dollars to her family. And so, the children hated her
for all these reasons of big and little consequence. They hated her pale snow face, her waiting silence, her
thinness, and her possible future.

“Get away!” The boy gave her another push. “What’re you waiting for?”

[35] Then, for the first time, she turned and looked at him. And what she was waiting for was in her eyes.

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“Well, don’t wait around here!” cried the boy savagely. “You won’t see nothing!”

Her lips moved.

“Nothing!” he cried. “It was all a joke, wasn’t it?” He turned to the other children. “Nothing’s happening today. Is
it?”

They all blinked at him and then, understanding, laughed and shook their heads. “Nothing, nothing!”

[40] “Oh, but,” Margot whispered, her eyes helpless. “But this is the day, the scientists predict, they say, they know,
the sun...”

“All a joke!” said the boy, and seized her roughly. “Hey, everyone, let’s put her in a closet before teacher comes!”

“No,” said Margot, falling back.

3. Savagely (adverb) in an animal-like, violent way

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 They surged about her, caught her up and bore her, protesting, and then pleading, and then crying, back into a
tunnel, a room, a closet, where they slammed and locked the door. They stood looking at the door and saw it
tremble from her beating and throwing herself against it. They heard her muffled cries. Then, smiling, they
turned and went out and back down the tunnel, just as the teacher arrived.

“Ready, children?” She glanced at her watch.

[45] “Yes!” said everyone.

“Are we all here?”

“Yes!”

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The rain slackened still more.

They crowded to the huge door.

[50] The rain stopped.

It was as if, in the midst of a film concerning an avalanche, a tornado, a hurricane, a volcanic eruption,
something had, first, gone wrong with the sound apparatus, thus muffling and finally cutting off all noise, all of
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the blasts and repercussions and thunders, and then, second, ripped the film from the projector and inserted
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in its place a peaceful tropical slide which did not move or tremor. The world ground to a standstill. The silence
was so immense and unbelievable that you felt your ears had been stuffed or you had lost your hearing
altogether. The children put their hands to their ears. They stood apart. The door slid back and the smell of the
silent, waiting world came in to them.

The sun came out.

It was the color of flaming bronze and it was very large. And the sky around it was a blazing blue tile color. And
the jungle burned with sunlight as the children, released from their spell, rushed out, yelling, into the
springtime.

“Now, don’t go too far,” called the teacher after them. “You’ve only two hours, you know. You wouldn’t want to
get caught out!”

[55] But they were running and turning their faces up to the sky and feeling the sun on their cheeks like a warm
iron; they were taking off their jackets and letting the sun burn their arms.

4. Slacken (verb) to slow down or lessen in intensity

5. Movies that are recorded on physical film must be shown using a projector, which shines light through the
film, allowing the image to be seen on a screen.
6. A slide is an individual image that can be displayed on a projector, similar to a slide in a PowerPoint
presentation.

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 “Oh, it’s better than the sunlamps, isn’t it?”

“Much, much better!”

They stopped running and stood in the great jungle that covered Venus, that grew and never stopped growing,
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tumultuously, even as you watched it. It was a nest of octopi, clustering up great arms of flesh-like weed,
wavering, flowering this brief spring.

It was the color of rubber and ash, this jungle, from the many years without sun. It was the color of stones and
white cheeses and ink, and it was the color of the moon.

[60] The children lay out, laughing, on the jungle mattress, and heard it sigh and squeak under them, resilient and
alive. They ran among the trees, they slipped and fell, they pushed each other, they played hide-and-seek and
tag, but most of all they squinted at the sun until the tears ran down their faces, they put their hands up to that
yellowness and that amazing blueness and they breathed of the fresh, fresh air and listened and listened to the
silence which suspended them in a blessed sea of no sound and no motion. They looked at everything and
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savored everything. Then, wildly, like animals escaped from their caves, they ran and ran in shouting circles.

They ran for an hour and did not stop running.

And then —

In the midst of their running one of the girls wailed.

Everyone stopped.

[65] The girl, standing in the open, held out her hand.

“Oh, look, look,” she said trembling.

They came slowly to look at her opened palm. In the center of it, cupped and huge, was a single raindrop.

She began to cry, looking at it.

They glanced quietly at the sky.

[70] “Oh. Oh.”

A few cold drops fell on their noses and their cheeks and their mouths. The sun faded behind a stir of mist. A
wind blew cool around them. They turned and started to walk back toward the underground house, their hands
at their sides, their smiles vanishing away.

7. Tumultuously (adverb) in a confused, disorganized way

8. Savor (verb) to enjoy something completely

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 A boom of thunder startled them and like leaves before a new hurricane, they tumbled upon each other and
ran. Lightning struck ten miles away, five miles away, a mile, a half mile. The sky darkened into midnight in a
flash.

They stood in the doorway of the underground for a moment until it was raining hard. Then they closed the
door and heard the gigantic sound of the rain falling in tons and avalanches, everywhere and forever.

“Will it be seven more years?”

[75] “Yes. Seven.”

Then one of them gave a little cry.

“Margot!”

“What?”

“She’s still in the closet where we locked her.”

[80] “Margot.”

They stood as if someone had driven them, like so many stakes, into the floor. They looked at each other and
then looked away. They glanced out at the world that was raining now and raining and raining steadily. They
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could not meet each other’s glances. Their faces were solemn and pale.

They looked at their hands and feet, their faces down.

“Margot.”

One of the girls said, “Well...?” No one moved.

[85] “Go on,” whispered the girl.

They walked slowly down the hall in the sound of cold rain. They turned through the doorway to the room in
the sound of the storm and thunder, lightning on their faces, blue and terrible. They walked over to the closet
door slowly and stood by it.

Behind the closet door was only silence.

They unlocked the door, even more slowly, and let Margot out.

9. Solemn (adjective) serious, without cheer

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"All Summer in a Day" by Ray Bradbury. Reprinted by permission of Don Congdon Associates, Inc. Copyright © 1954,
renewed 1982 by Ray Bradbury.

Unless otherwise noted, this content is licensed under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license

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 Text-Dependent Questions
Directions: For the following questions, choose the best answer or respond in complete sentences.

1. How do the other children regard Margot at the beginning of the story?
A. They admire Margot for being so unique.
B. They pity Margot for her sun-filled childhood.
C. They envy Margot for her unusual experiences.
D. They appreciate Margot for teaching them new things.

2. What does the phrase "like escaped animals from their caves" imply about the sun's impact on the
children? (Paragraph 60)
A. The sun makes the children violent.
B. The sun makes the children feel free.
C. The sun turns the children against each other.
D. The sun causes the children to understand Margot.

3. Why does the author describe the color of the landscape in paragraph 59?
A. to illustrate the way sun is harming Venus's natural wonders
B. to illustrate the natural beauty that the rain creates on Venus \
C. to illustrate that the children were right to hide Margot from the sun
D. to illustrate how the sun revealed the truth of life on Venus to the children

4. What does the author's use of figurative language in paragraph 23 reveal about Margot?
A. Margot has become angry and violent from the lack of sun on Venus.
B. Margot has gained confidence and strength from her new home on Venus.
C. Margot has lost strength and energy because of the constant rain on Venus.
D. Margot has learned to overcome challenges and disappointments because of her life
on Venus.

5. Which statement best expresses a theme of "All Summer in a Day"?

A. Following the crowd can lead to cruel actions that one will later regret.
B. Following the crowd can give people the courage to try new things.
C. Following the crowd can make people afraid to be independent.
D. Following the crowd can result in damage to the environment.

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6. How does the author use character change, the resolution, or literary devices to reveal theme in
"All Summer in a Day"?

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 Discussion Questions
Directions: Brainstorm your answers to the following questions in the space provided. Be prepared to share
your original ideas in a class discussion.

1. Margot moved from Earth to Venus. How can major changes in people's lives affect their views and
the way they think about the world? Discuss a time when you were influenced by a major change in
your life.

2. Margot's perspective is different from all of the other children's perspectives. When have you
expressed an opinion that your friends did not agree with? How did they respond to your unique
way of thinking?

3. Why do people form opinions about unfamiliar people and places? How did the children form
opinions about Margot based on her experiences? What are some prejudices you may have about
unfamiliar people or places?

4. The children robbed Margot of a chance to experience the sun when they locked her in the closet.
Were you ever prevented from having an amazing experience? If you could relive that moment,
what would you do?

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